Dear Moderator

Dear moderator

Here are the links for all parts of my coursework.

Final construction 

Evaluation Questions
Question 1
Question 2 
Question 3
Question 4

Research
Research into magazine articles and digipaks
Research into music videos 
Research into target audience

Planning
Planning music video 
Planning digipak
Planning magazine article for digipak

Enjoy!
Cameron Dallas

Question 3

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback.

Audience feedback was key for me in my construction stage. Due to the purpose of my media text being to sell the artist and their music the importance of audience opinion is large. The idea of producing a product for a target audience suggested it needed to appeal to a specific group of people without this the product would not be able to fulfill its intended purpose of selling. 

My audience feedback came in a few forms. An audience profile, which although is not audience feedback itself was important in aiding me in my future audience feedback, in order to establish my target audience, focus group feedback in order to gain an instant opinion on both my video but also my ancillary products and an online survey, created with Surveymonkey in order to establish a wider range of opinions throughout all of my target audience. 

My audience profiling

My audience profile allowed me to establish my target audience for many things such as, what music they liked, their age and gender and their psychographic segmentation (lifestyle and interests). From this I was able to determine who my video must appeal to and therefore what conventions it must adhere to. This was important to my audience feedback as it allowed me to distribute my online survey to, and create a focus group that was made up by this construction of a target audience. 

My online survey

I decided to distribute my survey through the use of social media, allowing me to be able to reach my target audience as well as a wide range of demographics and psychograpghics. In my online survey I started by establishing who was answering, asking for both age and gender. I did this in order to establish those who fitted with my audience profile and in order to filter out those that didn't. This was important because it meant that I was able focus on the feedback of people within

my target audience.  My responses, once filtered for those which matched my intended audience looked like this. With only a slight male majority I was able to get a better understanding of feedback from both genders and with people from a range of ages within my target audience I was able to get an understanding of a range of age responses.

Next I asked about their preferred music genre. From social media, Twitter and Facebook, I was able to present my survey to those who have similar favourites to my artist and therefore receive similar genres to my artist.

 This question allowed me to create links between demographics and music genres comparing age and gender to the responses of this question. It also gave me the ability to link the idea of genre conventions of my artist genre and the demographic and psychographics of the respondents. This helped me to choose the videos I analysed as part of my research and planning because I was able to clearly see which genres are popular in my target audience and therefore would be able to find what best appeals to my intended audience.

For the fourth question I decided to ask about the different ways in which my audience consumes their media. Unsurprisingly due to the state of the industry at the moment, every respondent except from one replied With either Youtube or a similar online streaming service. This isn't surprising because of the popularity of music videos on Youtube. Only one from the top thirty most viewed videos on the site isn't a music video.  Due to the nature of my artist and the lack of music videos they have produced, their Youtube presence is zero. However, what this tells me is that people of audiences similar to my artist use Youtube to fulfill their music needs and therefore it is this site I used to release my video as it was most suited and the one I am most familiar with.

For my final question I asked what the respondents favourite music video was. This allowed me to identify the links between genre of video and preferred type of video (performance, narrative or concept). I was able to establish the popularity of narrative and conceptual videos in similar genres to my artist. This aided my choice in the videos I chose to analyse as research but also on the choice of the type of my own video.





Focus Group

I decided to use a focus group in order to gain some audience feedback about my ancillary texts. I did this with both an online survey but also a verbal discussion with people that fitted my target audience. I initially shared the ideas of having a simplistic design that carried across both products with the use of more neutral colours and these were met positively with an agreement on how it could link to my artist and their position as an unsigned artist appealing to a wide audience. Once decided on a style I consulted them on the use of the font LT Oksana, which I had found on an online website and this too was met with agreement. I had originally decided to use the images on the inside cover of the digipak individually on the magazine advert, however the cluttered structure was described as informal and it was suggested that I followed suite with the convention of having the digipak cover as the center of attention. This I decided to compromise on and decided to show the inside of the digipak still in-keeping with the convention but challenging it slightly. Once I had created a final draft I created an online survey for my focus group to fill out, highlighting the themes, colours, fonts and graphics and also what worked and what could be improved. The negative feedback I got was scarce and what there was often contrasted to what another said was a positive feature. For example one said "The 3D feel of the digipak image" was a positive however another said, "Possibly the album cover in the centre. As its a picture, it feels like it breaks the clean look of the poster." I decided to keep the image because I felt it matched the unusual colours in representing the artist's genre as indie  different to the mainstream, more popular genres.

Question 2

http://prezi.com/siflvhdtlbpu/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Question 1

Directors commentary script

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

G324 Media Evaluation Question 1

In order to create a music video that fits in with the conventions of your genre you must have had to do some research to find what your genre consists of. How did you go about discovering the conventions of which you adhered to?

For my research I had to analyse both the conventions of music videos but also that of the ancillary texts I was to produce. Music videos are promotional videos made in order to sell an artist. Therefore they must link to the artist either through narrative or performance. I chose the later of the two for my video. I did this for a few reasons. The main of those reasons was it is conventional of a music video  of the genre of alternative rock or folk-rock, of which my music video falls into, to be performance. This allows the band to sell their identity and to appeal to their specific audience.  When planning my video I analysed two music videos, one of which was Shot At The Night by The Killers. In this analysis I picked out the features of the genre in order to apply them to my own media text. Features such as camera angles, shots and movements, post production and mise en scene were highlighted and it was these conventions of genre which I was able to choose to adhere to or contrast. One example of genre convention I chose to conform to is the use of high angle shots of the artist, presenting them as empowered or idolised, helping to create a star motif. For example in Shot of the Night Brandon Flowers is portrayed as powerful through the use of close ups and high angle shots. Similarly I analysed two digipaks, one, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida and Death to all his Friends, and the second, Kings of Leon’s; Come Around Sunshine in order to find the conventions of Digipaks in the same genre. For example the use of fonts colour and the appearance or omission of the artist’s image. I decided to conform to the use of a six panel digipak in order to create a professional product. This is usually conventional of a digipak because of the additional substance included in a digipak in comparison to a standard album is easier to fit into six panels instead of just four and it also allows for two discs. I also decided to follow the route of Kings of Leon by not featuring the artist on the digipak. This was for a few reasons, one of which is I wanted to be able to represent the music and style of the group without the influence of their appearance. I also decided on similar neutral and subtle colours for the digipak like Come Around Sundown. These colours also helped to represent the chilled themes of the music and have connotations of warmth and relaxed tones. I also analysed a music tour poster in order to gain an understanding of the conventions of printed music advertisements. Analysing this I was able to pick out features such as the consistency of colour and the idea of band identity. This allowed me to create a professional digipak and magazine advert by using a house style, through colours and graphics, in order to create an artist identity and creating a whole product through synergy.

How did you decide on your use of actors, locations and props in accordance to said conventions and how did these conform to or challenge them?

When deciding on an actor I had to both, consult my research on conventions but also my audience profile because I was making a product to sell the artist therefore it had to appeal to those who made up it’s audience.  looking at my artists social media i was able to get a clear understanding of who their audience consisted of , males between 18 and 30. Therefore when i went about choosing an actor I limited myself to these parameters. Joe was a good fit, in-keeping with the age group and of course gender, as well as fitting in with the conventional male lead role in similar productions of the same genre. I decided to conform to these conventions of a young male because of the target audience. It also links to goodwin’s theory of star image, featuring heavily on the main protagonist and selling their identity to the public. However contrasting this I was unable to use the actual artist themselves due to logistical problems and had to use my creative initiative in deciding on how best to create a performance video which conventionally features the artist themselves without them. When I chose Joe this was something I had to think about and i decided that the best way of getting around the issue was by representing him as the artist himself. This way it conforms to Goodwin's theory of the importance of an artist in a performance video and therefore keeping the audience engagement by doing so. The location choices were more logistically minded using what was available locally but also fitting with the genre conventions. The location of a remote woods is used in many videos in order to create mystery and suspense, for example it is featured in Imagine Dragons video, Radioactive. Mise en scene was also another factor of genre conventions for which I had to consult my planning when making my video.

How did your construction link with these genre conventions?

The use of timelapse in Alternative and indie music videos are prolifent. They can be used to signify and symbolise different things from the simple passing of time to the idea of the protagonist feeling lost in his or her environment. In Shot At The Night a timelapse of an establishing shot of Las Vegas is used to display the bustling nightlife and create a theme of happening. In my media production I used timelapses both to show the passing of time but also to suggest the importance of the main character/artist. My video only features the main protagonist, the only exception to this being people featured in the timelapses. This signify the lack of importance of anyone else, which links to the theme of living your life as you want to featured in the song. Links between visuals and lyrics are an important convention in all genres of music video, especially alternative and indie. Goodwin states that it is important for there to be a succinct relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. In the opening shot of my video I start with the link between lyrics “I’ve been sitting down” and the visual of Joe sitting on the bar stool. This match-up creates a clear link between the song and the video which is very important in a performance video. This is similar to Gnarls Barkley - Going on which clearly links the two throughout the video.

Evaluation Question 4

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Created with Padlet

Final Construction

Yo! check it out!

Magazine advert

My Magazine Advert

This is my magazine advertisement for my digipak for We Are People.

I created my magazine advert in the same house style as the digipak, using the same colour and design in order to create an identity recognisable to the audience.